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Energy Secretary Steven Chu defended his department’s policies to Congress on Tuesday after House Republicans released two extensive reports charging that alternative-energy loan programs and a huge home weatherization program for poor households were riddled with failures and mistakes. …

It’s not unusual for Republicans to criticize President Obama via Twitter. But today, members of the Texas delegation were particularly hard on him, calling him out on issues ranging from gas prices to health care to Fast and Furious. …

“High gas prices hurt everyone, but families and small businesses are hit especially hard,” Rep. Pete Olson said today. “That’s why we need to open more of our domestic resources, which will stabilize gas prices, create high paying jobs and reduce our reliance on Middle East oil.”
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In 2006, 25 percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center believed the Bush administration to be the top reason for the increased gas prices. In a late-February Pew poll this year, 18 percent to assign blame to the Obama administration.

The average price of gasoline has increased 30 cents a gallon over the past month, leading Republicans to blame President Barack Obama and Democrats pointing fingers at financial speculators. With drilling and supply setting decades-long records, tensions over Iran’s nuclear ambitions deserve some of the responsibility. …

Amy Myers Jaffe of the Baker Institute writes: “The SPR was not created to be a tool only used in the event of war (though we are engaged in military activity in Libya, Yemen, and Afghanistan so one could argue we are at war) or in response to a major natural disaster (though the SPR is useful for that purpose). It was created to be a tool to redress the bargaining imbalance to allow the United States greater maneuver in its foreign policy despite the fact that we are a major importer of oil and to prevent global economic damage from undue manipulation of oil markets.

“The release of oil from the system last week was aimed to remove the fear factor out of the oil market and thereby both protect the stability of the global economy and additionally ensure that oil producers are discouraged from taking undue advantage of market instability and uncertainty.

“We believe this aim is in line with the original spirit of the creation of the reserve and is sound policy.”